Film, Form, And Culture

CONTENTS Preface = v Introduction = 1 1. IMAGE AND REALITY = 10 IMAGES OF IMAGES = 10 The "Truth" of the image = 12 The Urge to Represent "Reallity" = 16 Perspective and the Pleasures of Tricking the Eye = 17 Photography and Reality = 19 Manipulation of the Image = 21 Reality as Image = 22 FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TO THE CINEMATIC IMAGE = 23 Mobing Images = 24 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 28 2. FORMAL STRUCTURES: HOW FILMS TELL THEIR STORIES = 30 THE IMAGE, THE WORLD, AND THE FILM STUDIO = 30 From Image to NARRATIVE = 30 THE ECONOMICS OF THE IMAGE = 33 The System Develops: Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin = 34 The Growth of Corporate Filmmaking = 37 THE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD STYLE = 38 Fabricating the Image = 38 The Whole and Its Parts = 44 Making the Parts Invisible = 45 Story, Plot, and Narration = 46 Convention and Consciousness = 49 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 50 3. BUILDING BLOCKS I: THE SHOT = 51 THE SHOT = 51 COMPOSITION: THE SIZE OF THE FRAME = 52 Wide Screen = 54 Anamorphic and "Flat" Wide Screen Processes = 54 Loss of Standards = 57 HOW COMPOSITION WORKS = 59 Composition in Early Cinema = 59 D. W. Griffith = 59 The 90-Degree Rule = 60 The Studios and the Shot = 62 Mise-en-Scene, German Expressionism, Exceptions to the Rules = 64 Mise-en-Scene in Sternberg, Murnau, and Hitchcock = 66 ORSON WELLES AND THE REINVENTION OF COMPOSITION = 70 Deep Focus and the Long Take = 70 WORKING AGAINST THE RULES = 74 LIGHTING AND COLOR = 75 Composing in wide Screen = 77 THE MOVING CAMERA = 78 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 80 4. BUILDING BLOCKS II: THE CUT = 81 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTINUITY CUTTING = 85 Griffith and Cutting = 86 Shot/Reverse Shot = 88 Point of View = 91 Sight Lines = 92 CONVENTION, CULTURE, RESISTANCE = 94 Gender = 99 Coding = 99 Responses to Conventional Cutting = 100 Eisensteinian Montage = 101 Avant-Grade Film = 105 Working Creatively within and against Conventions = 106 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 106 5. THE STORY TELLERS OF FILM I = 108 COLLABORATION AS CREATIVITY CREATIVE CRAFTSPEOPLE = 111 Cinematographer = 111 Production Designer = 113 Computer Designer = 114 Sound Designers = 116 Editor = 118 Composer = 119 Screenwriter = 122 Actors = 124 Producer = 128 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 130 6.THE STORY TELLERS OF FILM II: THE FILM DIRECTOR = 133 EUROPEAN ORIGINS = 133 THE AUTEUR THEORY = 135 Rovert Altman = 139 Martin Scorsese = 140 Stanley Kubrick = 149 Alfred Hitchcock = 151 WOMEN AUTEURS = 253 Women's Avant-grade Film = 154 Maya Deren = 154 Alice Guy-Blache and Lois Weber = 156 Dorothy Arzner = 156 Ida Lupino = 157 Women Filmmakers Today = 159 Julie Dash, Julie Taymor, and Chantal Akeman = 160 THE AUTEUR ABROAD = 160 AYTEURISM TODAY = 167 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 169 7. FILM AS CULTURAL PRACTICE = 171 FILM IN THE REALM OF CULTURE = 171 CULTURE AS TEXT = 172 Subcultures = 173 Media and Cultures = 174 The New Web = 176 THEORIES OF CULTURE = 177 The Critique of American Popular Culture = 179 High Culture, Masscuit, and Midcuit = 180 Walter Benjamin and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction = 181 The Aura of State Intervention = 183 The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies = 183 Reception and Negotiation = 184 Judgment and Values = 186 Intertextuality and Postmodernism = 186 CULTURAL CRITICISM APPLIED TO VERTGO AND DIE HARD = 188 The Cultural-Technological Mix: Film and Television = 189 The Actor's Persona: Bruce Wills and James Stewart = 192 Vertigo and the Culture of the Fitfies = 193 The Vulnerable Male in Film = 196 Postmodern Villains = 202 Ethnicity in Die Hard = 204 The Buddy Film = 205 The End of Redemption = 206 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 208 8. THE STORIES TOLD by FILM I = 211 MASTER NARRATIVES AND DOMINANT FICTIONS = 211 Closure = 212 The Master and the Dominant = 212 Censorship = 214 GENRE = 215 Subgenres = 216 Genre and gesture = 217 Generic Patterns: The Gangster Film = 219 Genre and Narrative Economy = 220 DOCUMENTARY = 222 Newsreels and Television = 222 Early Masters of the Documentary = 223 World War II = 228 Cinema Verite = 228 Television Documentary = 231 THE GENRES OF FICTION FILMS = 232 Melodrama = 232 Film Noir = 243 Noir's Climax = 248 Noir's Rebirth = 251 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 252 9. THE STORIES TOLD by FILM II = 255 OTYER GENRES: THE WESTERN = 255 Landscape = 256 The Obstacles to Westward Expansion = 256 The Western Star and the Western Director = 257 The Western after the Fifties = 261 SCIENCE FICTION = 263 Science Fiction in the Fifties = 265 GENRE RESILIENCE = 271 EUROPEAN AND OTHER CINEMAS = 271 Italian Neorealism = 271 Neorealism in America = 274 The French New Wave = 274 DOUGLAS SIRK, RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER, AND TODD HAYNES: ONE GENRE, THREE WAYS = 278 The Filmmakers = 278 The Common Thread = 280 All That Heaven Allows and Far From Heaven = 282 Fassbinder-ali: Fear Eats the Soul = 286 BRIEF CONCLUSIONS = 292 NOTES AND REFERENCES = 292 Glossary = 294 Index = 301

Show more